A child gets a cough about eight times a year, on average; that means he or she has a bout of coughing every month and a half, or, what amounts to the same thing, every six-and-a-half weeks, every 45 days, every 1,080 hours or every 25,920 minutes.

So it might not be a bad idea to know what we can do to avoid catching a cough and, if we already have one, what we can do to get rid of it.